Yousaf fights Labour surge with pledge to freeze Scotland's council tax next year

Humza Yousaf has announced that Scotland's council taxes will be frozen next year and millions of pounds added to health spending as he launches a fightback against Labour's surge in the polls.

- Severin Carrell

Yousaf admitted in his first conference speech as the Scottish National party leader that last month's huge defeat at the hands of Labour in the Rutherglen and Hamilton West byelection had been "a tough night" for the SNP.

Labour won with 58% of the vote by focusing heavily on the cost of living crisis, attacking the Scottish government's decision to allow council tax rises next April and its hints that income tax rates would also rise.

The first minister told delegates at the SNP's conference in Aberdeen he had "considered carefully" what his government could do about the economic crisis, in a speech that couched independence as an aspiration rather than an immediate goal.

Repeating an election-winning policy first unveiled by Alex Salmond, the SNP's former leader, after the banking crash in 2008, Yousaf said he would halt plans to allow Scotland's 32 councils to raise council tax next year.

"We know that people are filled with dread when the bills are going up and up," he said. "We can't stop all the bills rising - but where we can act, we should."